The WWE Smackdown Reaction for 1/7/22

Welcome to the Smackdown Reaction, where I offer my take on this week’s show at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, CT.

As always, you can check out John’s full in-depth review here.

A Brock Lesnar Day 1/Raw recap leads us to Promo Time with Roman Reigns. Reigns asks to be acknowledged so Lesnar comes out. Lesnar introduces himself Paul Heyman style to Reign’s face. Lesnar challenges Reigns to give the fans what they want, Lesnar/Reigns title for title. So that’s how we might get to WrestleMania. Reigns dismisses the idea before putting Heyman and Lesnar down. Heyman said that hurt him, leading to a back and forth between the three before Reigns hits Lesnar with a Superman Punch cheapshot to close out the spot. It was a nice little progression to the story, given the last-minute changes at Day 1.

Our first match of the night was Sami Zayn taking on Rick Boogs. Shinsuke Nakamura was at ringside for Boogs. Zayn does have a future title match whenever they decide to do it. It’s a shame Nakamura isn’t featured much with the title. Boogs showed off some impressive power with a delayed vertical suplex even going down to his knees before standing up and completing the suplex spot. Boogs wins after Zayn was yapping at Nakamura. After the match, Johnny Knoxville snuck into the ring and pitched Zayn over the top rope to the floor to qualify for the Royal Rumble match. Pencil in a confrontation between the two in the Rumble.

Promo Time with Charlotte Flair is up next. She introduces a video package announcing about half of the participants in the Women’s Royal Rumble. The biggest shocker was current Impact Wrestling Knockouts Champion Mickie James was announced as participating. McAfee acknowledged the fact on air after the package played. WWE’s Twitter account would do the same in their announcement of Mickie James’s participation. Charlotte declares herself for the Rumble, a la Brock Lesnar a couple of years ago. Naomi comes and challenges Flair to a match right now and slaps her.

The match is on and Naomi looks great in it. Naomi had the match won, via countout, because we all know Flair won’t take a clean loss, when Sonya Deville comes out to ruin the match by making it no countout and I immediately lose interest in the match. Deville would further taint the match by declaring it no DQ. The match started to get a little long and sloppy before Flair finally won.

A terrible Happy Talk with Madcap Moss posing as Drew McIntyre leads into the scheduled Corbin/Moss tag match with the Viking Raiders, who save the crowd from the awfulness.

The tag match was okay, mirroring the RK-Bro/Alpha Academy match we saw on Raw. Moss picked up the win for his team. I can still remember when the Viking Raiders were total badasses in the ring.

Main event time has The Usos defending the Smackdown Tag Team Championship against The New Day in a street fight. This would be New Day’s last chance at the tag titles (for now anyway). The match was really good as you would expect from the two teams. I liked the Day 1 match better though. There were a couple of interesting spots with the “armor” New Day introduced. They tried to make the match look different from the Day 1 bout and were successful at that. In the end, The Usos retained after a 1D on Kofi through a table.

After the match, Reigns was shown sitting backstage and Seth “Freakin” Rollins walked in and started laughing at Reigns, implying he’s Reigns opponent at the Royal Rumble to close out the show.

Let’s take a look at tonight’s highs and lows.

The Highs

The Usos and New Day main event was great. When these two face off, you know it will be good. With this being The New Day’s last chance at the tag titles (for now), I wonder who will be the next teams in line for them. The rest of the tag division has been largely forgotten lately.

I liked Lesnar doing the Heyman-like introduction of himself. It was spot on.

The Lows

Can WWE please tell us why we should care about Naomi’s feud with Sonya Deville? It has gone on for far too long and has been largely pointless. It wouldn’t surprise me if Creative forgot where this was supposed to go. Naomi has won the Women’s Championship at WrestleMania, in her hometown no less, so what are we trying to build to? Has Vince forgotten that she’s related to The Rock? Granted, it’s by marriage but she’s in that family tree now.

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That’s all I’ve got, until next time.